1. Field of the Invention
Provision of novel composition to facilitate the shaving of body hair.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
The active ingredient in products that are used for wet shaving by men is a soap. The procedure that is most satisfactory involves washing the face with bar soap and leaving it wet and soapy. Then a shaving product is applied which softens the beard and provides lubricity to permit the razor to glide across the face removing the beard with minimal scraping of the skin.
Soap is the ideal single ingredient for this purpose and is most widely used in shaving products. Its alkalinity causes the beard to hydrate and soften to facilitate its removal. In the process the outer cuticle of the hair opens to allow it to be more easily cut by the blade. In addition, the soap causes the keratin layer of the skin to hydrate to minimize the drag of the blade during its passage across the skin thus minimizing irritation and cutting of the skin.
Soap used alone, however, is not perfect. Soap lather dries too quickly on the face--so quickly that if soap alone is used as with a shaving mug and brush--the lather must be worked up and re-applied several times during the course of a single shaving procedure.
In addition most men find shaving with soapy to be too irritating. Younger men, particularly with sensitive skin in the neck area, experience irritation and rashes when shaving with soap alone. Since acne pustules are also commonly present in this age group, cuts are common incident to shaving.
During the past decades many approaches have been taken in products formulated to improve blade shaving with soap. Brushless shaving creams were developed which were more emollient and lubricious than soap alone due to the fats and waxes they contained. Typically stearic acid and fatty alcohols were used to provide added lubrication and to prevent drying out on the face. These did a poor job of hydrating the beard and skin, so a close shave was impossible. Additionally, the added fats and waxes made rinsing the razor very difficult and prolonged the shaving process measurably. As a result these products fell into disuse.
The advent of the aerosol foam shaves quickly replaced other products that delivered soap to the face because of their convenience. They still suffered from the disadvantages of soap as the single active shaving ingredient and formulation efforts continued in order to make the aerosol shaving products more effective and more comfortable.
It is possible to add humectants and emollients to the aqueous soap solutions typical of foam shaves and these are commonly used by the formulators skilled in the art of preparing such products. Glycerin, propylene glycol, sorbitol as humectants and lanolin, fatty alcohols, esters and ethers and other fatty vegetable animal and mineral oils commonly appear in these formulations.
None of these go far enough in improving the performance of the basic soap solution of foam shaves to make the product demonstrably superior to the user. Additionally many of these materials reduce the performance of the soap by an antifoam effect or make the product more difficult to rinse from the razor as a result of their lipophilic nature.
More recently water soluble polymers have been employed experimentally in shaving products since they impart lubricity to aqueous solutions. However, it has been found that they lose their discernible lubricity in the presence of soap and worse still, they develop an unpleasant stringiness in combination with soap.
The way those skilled in the art have attempted to cope with the problem is by applying these polymers separately. Currently the major razor manufacturers are marketing razors with solid strips of these polymers bonded to the shaving surface of the razor above the blades. Most of these use a strip of high molecular weight polymers of ethylene oxide, commercially known as Polyox resin (manufactured by Union Carbide Corp.).
These poly (ethylene oxide) polymers bonded to the razor soon become inoperative due to their interaction with the shaving cream soap. It would be desireable to utilize the outstanding slip characteristic of these polyethylene oxide polymers when in contact with soap solutions such as found in shaving creams, without the polyethylene polymer becoming stringy and unusable.
It is known that polyethylene oxide polymers have strong hydrogen bonding properties that account for the association of these polyethers with various polar compounds. These novel complexes can be discrete chemical entities resulting from very strong intermolecular association and often exhibit properties markedly different from either component.